Cups are typically packaged for retail or commercial sale as nested stacks of cups. For example, it is not unusual to provide cups nested in two stacks (e.g., of 10 cups each for a total of 20 cups) within a plastic bag for retail sale, for example, in a grocery store, supermarket, gas station, etc.
Automated processes and machines have been provided to sort and arrange the cups into the nested stacks for packaging. Additionally, processes and machines have been proposed to handle nested stacks of cups. For example, a holding mechanism has been proposed having suction chambers with a lower suction opening for engaging a cup stack by negative pressure. The holding mechanism can be used to remove the cups stacks from a transport container.